Sunday, October 16, 2011

Read my FabuBlog!

Along the lines of crispety, crunchety-type advertising nonsense, I give you one of my biggest peeves: taking two words and combining them to make a new, supposedly "WOW" marketing word.

Now, this isn't always a bad thing. If you're a radio station and want to celebrate the month of October by playing commercial-free rock 'n' roll, you could call it Rocktober. That works, right? It still sounds like October, but it gets across what's special about this October.

Or, to use my 8-year-old's example (I love that he gets this stuff), if you owned a car-repair shop and wanted to give your customers a deal on towing during the tenth month of the year, you could call it Oc-TOW-ber. Cute, right?

Know what's not cute? Anytober. It's not only not cute, it's somewhat embarrassing. Talk about lazy creativity.


Another example:


That's right: fruitabulous (don't forget the all-important trademark symbol -- don't want anyone stealing this gem). Because it sounds so close to fabulous? No, it doesn't. It sounds ridiculous.

Other offenders:
JumpTastic -- A place that rents out large inflatable structures for kids to jump in.

Snowmageddon -- Heard and seen often last winter during the several severe snowstorms. (Carmageddon, on the other hand, to describe what was supposed to be the end of the world due to road closings in L.A. last summer, totally works.)

Carbtastic -- I don't remember what product this was used to describe, but it was during the carb-avoiding era, so I guess it doesn't make sense on two levels. Carbs were supposed to be bad, weren't they?

Pugoween -- Can you guess this one? A Halloween party for pugs in costume. Yeah, I know.

There has to be a name for these. Awf-non-puns? RidicuNonRhymes? Welcoming your suggestions ...




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